While Bill Fontana (* 1947, Ohio, USA) is projecting the sounds of sustainable energy production on the inside of Kunsthaus Graz, his ‘Sonic Projections’ will also be broadcasting sounds of nature and culture from all over the world once every hour into urban space in Graz. This project is an adapted re-enactment of the sound installation he developed for the city as part of the 1988 steirischer herbst festival, which explored the National Socialist seizure of power. Although at the time it was quickly shut down by resistance to the political festival as a whole, Fontana’s work continues to resonate with a melancholic longing in the memory of many local residents.
For the Graz Year of Culture 2020, Fontana has reshaped the Sonic Projections from Schlossberg, using historical and more recent environmental sounds, such as a foghorn or an Australian lyrebird, to create a musical sound dialogue between the Graz clocktower and Kunsthaus. These unfamiliar sounds also call for attentive listening and a brief pause. Recorded in eight places around the city, the sounds blend with everyday noises in public space and are transmitted as a continuous sound pattern on the façade of Kunsthaus.
Sonic Projections is a sound project for the urban space of Graz. Harmonious sounds of nature and culture gathered from all over the world are broadcast from two central locations – the roof of Kunsthaus and the clocktower on the Schlossberg – into the urban environment. The dialogue includes sounds such as the song of an American nightingale, an Australian lyrebird, or the blast of a foghorn from San Francisco Bay, regularly inviting us to enjoy a brief, private retracing of the ‘overlooked’.
